Aleandrea's Alien Primer - Combined and Condensed Edition
by 5 Coloured Walker
Summary: Alien's aren't just people with rubber faces and funny hats.
1. Aleandrea's Alien Primer

**Aleandrea's Alien Primer, Combined Copy**

**1st Edition**

_'Almost done. I need to look for a publisher; perhaps I can get this to replace the stupidity that is the current alien primer for the Alliance._

_At least the Xenobio/psy sections. Those are atrocious, even if they cut things down just to what the average soldier needs it'd be a grand improvement… Unless it's all propaganda?_

_I should probably make two versions, one that has more… That can wait.'_

Aleandrea frowned, opening up Garrus' notes on the Turian section.

-XXXX-

Forward-

Many of you may know me as the Butcher of Torfan, and I'm considered to be racist towards Turians. Additionally, I have spent my entire life both as a noble and around the military, something that one would think too heavily shade my views.

First, unless you're a high ranking military tactician, you don't get to analyse my actions at Torfan, and be prepared to find out how bloodthirsty I'm not.

Second, yes, I've a tendency to accentuate Turian negatives. You'll see I've got a Turian editor to help balance that.

Thirdly, many Xenosociologists interact purely with civilian sectors and are as such are as jaded in the other direction, however reading this alongside the work of a civilian may be beneficial. And people who actually know me will laugh at you for calling me noble.

Anyhow, while many Xenosociology textbooks will begin talking about their psychology, I believe the first step in truly understanding someone is to look at where they come from. Where races are involved, this is first their home world, then their Biology.

-XXXX-

**Index**

**-**_I'll probably need to reorder this for publishing…_

Section 1: 'Major' Citadel Races

C1- Asari

C2- Salarians

C3- Batarians

C4- Turians

Section 2: 'Minor' Citadel Races

C5- Mutons

C6- Shigians/Thin Man

C7- Volus

C8- Hanar

C9 - Elcor

C10 - Drell

Section 3: Non-Citadel Races

C11: Vorcha

C12: Quarians

C13: Krogan

* * *

AN: This is going to go over 1/10th :p

This is what I think is one of the more major pieces of world building for the setting given I've told you to look at the works of Logical Premise for the Alliance. [And you should anyway, Logical Premise is awesome if dark.] Chapters won't be published in order [As you can see by looking at chapter 2/3.], but instead by perceived importance, which is why Chapter 3 comes first. These chapters will be re-odered a few days after its completion.

For those wondering as to the order Aleandrea's using, she's using the order based on how likely Humans are to encounter them, within the order of Major/Minor Council races and Non-Council races.

Edit: No, there won't be a Geth chapter. Kinda hard for Aleandrea to write one when knowledge about them is more than a little scarce.


	2. C3: Batarians

**C3: Batarians**

**Homeworld and Biology**

Details on the Batarian home world are something between ridiculously classified and surrounded with an impenetrable wall of lies for what does get out.

However, some things are rather known, Khar'Shan is a small dense planet with Sub-Earth gravity, and a short Day/Night cycle. It also maintains a relatively high temperature, and has dim-lighting. It also has a relatively low water content, with few oceans. It does however it has many underground water sources and lakes are extremely common.

Batarian's have an average height of 1.8m for males and 1.7m for males, roughly 5cm taller than Human average. They're believed to have come from a bipedal hunting animal that, like humans, used endurance as it's main advantage.

Batarian's adapted to Khar'Shan's short day-night cycle by becoming semi-nocturnal, staying awake for roughly 13 hours before sleeping roughly 5 hours. As one will note this is slightly better than the Human sleeping cycle, Batarian's recover more efficiently than Humans, but being adapted for much shorter days effectively have less endurance. One should note however, much of the Batarian's sleep time is required for mental recovery, physically they recover from exhaustion at an extreme pace, and have significantly faster healing rates, an injury that would put a Human down for a around month would likely only take a Batarian down for around three weeks.

To deal with lowered light levels and their semi-nocturnal activities, Batarian's developed a slightly better sensory suite, maintaining better visual acuity and they have much more sensitive noses. Their eyes see slightly into the infra-red spectrum, and their multi-chambered nose allows a greater processing of scent, while filtering dust and other particulates. The ridges above Batarian's eyes are actually heat-pits, similar to that of a snake, allowing limited heat vision, however this is calibrated for their ancestral environment, almost all Batarian's lack the ability to use this sense in areas non heated to their preference as their bodies attempts to keep themselves warm effectively blind themselves. They also loose this ability in times of heavy exertion, making it a rather limited sense, but one they can use to pick up on surprises that they would otherwise miss.

However, while seeing into Infra-red, they lack the ability to see violets and indigoes, with blues being seen as an extremely pale green.

Batarian muscle structure involves a greater amount of slow twitch muscle fibre, slowing them down somewhat in comparison to humans, however giving them much greater comparative strength when, grappling, leaping or climbing [Despite being made for lower gravity.]. Their skeletal system is as expected reinforced to take the strain, both chemically and physically, though this gives them slightly limited ranges of motion, by about 5-8 degrees compared to human motion ranges.

Batarian are believed to have achieved the status of top predator on their planed, unlike many other sapiens, mostly through their toughened hides, willingness to take more injury than normal due to increased healing rates, and extreme strength once a grapple has been achieved, in addition to their relatively great endurance and being intelligent tool users. This is something that has impacted heavily on their psychology.

**Batarian Psychology**

Imagine for a moment, what humans would have been like if they had been the planets dominant predator, truly, before becoming tool reliant.

Baatarians are for the most part extremely dominant people, constantly evaluating their status relative to others, and rather power-hungry. Almost all Batarians have an excellent memory for people and are skilled liars and lie detectors.

Perhaps one of the easier to understand ways to understand psychology of different species is with Maslow's hierarchy of needs; Batarians are no different in this case.

As with most species, Batarians first seek the basics to ensure they can live, food, water.

Next, like Humans, Batarians seek safety, however where Humans first seek physical safety such as shelter first, Batarians the seek to know their place in their social hierarchy, who they can depend on, who depends on them, and should they find it lacking, they first try to find people to fill those roles, making Batarians in one way, much more social than people. This also means they rely much more on community… Were they the type of people for it, they would donate heavily to those in need.

As I've been told by a Batarian in regards to their alliances, 'What you look on with bemusement and call ephemeral, we call our bedrock.' I believe it sums that up nicely.

Next, rather than seeking true belonging, Batarian's seek esteem. They declare their place, and constantly seek to move up. Much of their self-worth comes from their perceived dominance, not through companionship, which they actually seek first. For a Batarian, true friendship isn't something sought, and love is something that is wonderful if you can find it, but hardly necessary.

Despite their predisposition for deceit, loyalty is their most valued trait. It's nearly valued as much as within Turian culture, with the nearly coming purely from their understanding that everyone around them is jockeying for position as constantly as they are. Breaches of trust meet rather overblown responses, and often long term pettiness. Many who are friends to Batarians will be seen in a negative light due to how they act around them, but in truth it's more about maintaining civil relations.

**Batarian Society**

Batarian society is an extension of their need for dominance and safety. Like Humans and Turians, they live under a caste system, however they are the only society that still practices true slavery [The practice of indentured servitude exists among the Volus and Asari, and Human's have criminal designations which can be rather hard to get out of, and Turian's keep servants.].

For Batarian's , their caste system is an easy way to find those you should be able to make alliances with to meet their safety needs, as well as to quickly identify how you can rely on other people, while giving an institutionalised way to look down on others [The phrase, shit rolls downhill is almost literal in this case.].

One problem with this system, is that there is a large number of Batarians [And non Batarians, after they became a part of the galactic community.] who are sitting at the bottom looking for any way up, and are all capable liars, as well as willing to suffer more for their 'revolution', which is believed to have occurred a small number of times, Batarian's believing strongly in Divine Mandate [If things are going well, it's a sign the gods have chosen you. If things are going bad and you can be removed, then you obviously weren't meant to be in charge.]. Of course, the Batarians on top are equally good liars, and equally willing to suffer to stay on top if they need to, and over time Batarians have managed to create information control systems that put a halt to even STG info-war and infiltration techniques. This does cause slow reactions among their leadership, but they're willing to have to put up with another couple of hours of intense combat when the delays prevent relief as security clearances are modified.

Batarian religion, at a glance, is rather like that of the Japanese involving many gods and the Emperor, however unlike the Japanese they don't see spirits [Or Kami/Oni.] in everything, which is part of the reason slavery still holds over mass automation, as there is no true victory in dominating a machine, and they dominated their world a long time ago.

**The Batarian Military**

The Batarian military is one of terror and staunch defence. Their armor is made to inspire fear, their weapons are usually bloody, and high end forces often use weapons that make large amounts of noise. Area saturation is one of their biggest friends, and they happily make use of massed light machine guns and artillery, normally in the form of light tanks with long range cannons. Napalm-equivalent bombs are their go to choice for bombing runs… Of course, this means over all, the Batarian military is much less effective than effective, but is more able to rout their chosen foes. However, Batarian pirates are learning that fear tactics are mostly useless against Turians, as it causes them just to dig in harder unless they manage to make them over-value your skill, in which case they'll perform tactical withdrawels.

Scaring Batarian soldiers, is at once as hard and as effective as trying to scare Turians, and as easy as panicking Salarians.

Having been trained around terror tactics, Batarians handle fear tactics well, and much of their training involves using their slightly lessor gear in ways that deny terror tactics, or teach them just what is worth fearing. Batarians are known to widen their KBs significantly if they believe the opponent is going to use plasma [Either in the conventional Flamethrower sense or because they're facing Humans.], which means while it's easier to strike and short their shields with kinetics, they are able to largely ignore plasma attacks. [Heat can only radiate so far effectively, and given they almost exclusively make use of well insulated power armor to keep power costs of heating it low, this tactic is amazingly effective.]

However, should dominance appear to be achieved, Batarians will begin rapidly falling back to defensive positions to maintain a tenacious defence, but should those defences begin falling, they'll quickly begin to panic.

When fighting them, it's worth knowing, as is pretty common, avoid CQC. They're largely trained in grapples and in fighting styles similar to Jujitsu, instead of striking hard, they'll pull you into a grapple and then crush you despite your armour. [Carrying around and using heavier than normal weapons tends to build their arm strength considerably, and combined with their biological advantages and power armor, they've been known to crush the torso of non-Firaxite Alloy power armours.]

The fact they've also got thick skin and a above human body fat ratio for protection also helps.

And damage to the face will quickly panic Batarians, as they share a near-crippling phobia of eye damage. Heat passing near their face also causes an effect akin to a migraine due to their heat-pits, in addition to any other damage.


End file.
